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Revelle Humanities 2
Seth Lerer [email protected]
Office: Literature Building 228
Office Hours: M/W 3-4pm
Today:
Three things
1. Introduction to the course: goals, themes, approaches, overview
2. Introduction to the Aeneid:
Roman Culture
Virgil as an Author
Politics and Poetry
3. Introduction to reading Book I of the Aeneid
Themes and Techniques
The Virgilian Sentence
The Epic Simile
The Idea of narration
At end of class; logistics and details: books, papers, final, section TA’s
Issues on originality and plagiarism
Intro to the course
LOVE: what is the nature of desire?
how is human desire a function of related to spiritual desire?
how is the emotional experience of human love akin to the
experience of reading – can you love a book?
PURPOSE OF THE COURSE:
to read closely in the literary presentations of love and desire
to see how literature reflects social worlds
to develop a “humanistic” sensibility: narrative and story,
interpretation of signs; the cultivation of empathy
Literature is often the narrative of how things go wrong; the study of literature
prepares us for the unexpected
In the end: to find your self as a reader in literary narrative; to see how
literature works on you; to see how the challenge of being a reader is
to “find yourself” in all senses of that phrase
The challenge:
Where does meaning lie?
Authorial Intention vs. Reader Response
Is meaning something we recover or something we make
Theme of the books we read: how do we engage with human expression?
What happens when we read or hear something amiss?
What happens when our intentions go misunderstood?
What is the nature of literary understanding and the relationship of reading
to living?
How are these historical issues for understanding culture, in particular at the
start, Ancient Rome?
Four axes for the course:
Duty / Desire
Piety / Politics
Memory / Action
Rhetoric / Reality
Virgil and Rome
Virgil: 70 BC – 19 BC
Period of political upheaval
Came from a small landowning family in northern Italy: key point is that,
Though Italian, he is not of Roman birth
Educated in traditions of Greek and Latin Rhetoric, literature and science
Led a largely intellectual and literary life
Developed a sense of a literary career through the progression of literary forms
Political origins of the commission of the Aeneid: Octavian (nephew of Julius
Caesar and his adopted son and heir) defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the
Battle of Actium in 31 BC; sought to commission a major work of literature
Virgil took up the commission, but in his own way:
Set out to write a poem not about Octavian (who became Augustus Caesar
After 27 BC), but about Rome itself: its founding, its cultural ideals, its notions
Of paternity and duty – all of which Augustus was seen to embody
Roman idea of literature: a moral and political purpose
The Aeneid is a celebration of Roman identity but also a synthesis of the
Poet’s own educational and cultural inheritance: a synthesis of the Greek
Inheritance in Latin form
Nation and Narration: why does an empire need an epic?
Political and social identity keyed to narratives of action and character
Background to the Aeneid:
Troy: Trojan War; foundations of culture and politics; male/female relationships
Defined by abduction of Helen
Homer: Iliad and Odyssey: the Homeric model of direct epic narrative; the technique
Of in medias res narration; character; gods; heroes, epithets, similes
Rome: history: founding of Rome and search for Trojan lineage
politics: the Julian dynasty; the imperial project
Latinity: the making of the Latin language as an imperial as well as a literary
language
Culture: duty (pietas); family (gens); political home (patria)
Literary form: epic (primary and secondary; oral and literate; Greek and Latin)
rhetoric: oral and political performance; ideals of social eloquence
the simile as the key device of the epic: literary and political function
of comparisons
The first sentence of the Aeneid in Latin
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet
urbem,
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.
Mandelbaum trans:
I sing of arms and of a man: his fate
Had made him fugitive; he was the first
To journey from the coasts of Troy as far
As Italy and the Lavinian shores.
Across the lands and waters he was battered
Beneath the violence of High Ones, for
The savage Juno’s unforgetting anger;
And many sufferings were in his war –
Until he brought a city into being
And carried his gods to Latium;
From this have come the Latin race, the lords
Statement of purpose;
First person poet
Arms + man = Iliad/Odyssey
The geography of Aeneas’s
journey: Troy to Rome
Founding of Rome is the goal
of the poem and its hero.
The word “Romae” is the last
word of the first sentence.
How does this opening capture
our attention? Our trust?
our interest?
The role of the gods: Juno’s
anger. Anger of the gods as
a key theme of classical epic.
Question: does the hero have
will to act or is he subject to the
whims of the gods? Is his story
fated?
urbs / gens
Reading Book I : beginning
The first sentence
The figure of Juno
Speech of Aeolus
Sonic effects
The uses of the simile
When does Aeneas show up? How is he a public orator
Rhetoric and cookery; civilization and group eating
Venus: her speech; her appearance; Olympus as a law court
History and rhetoric: BOOK I IS A STORY OF NARRATIONS; HOW DO WE JUDGE
THE VERISIMILITUDE OF THE STORY AND THE AUTHORITY OF THE TELLER?
The bee simile and Carthage
Course planning and performance
Three short papers (paper 1, 15% of grade; paper 2, 20%; paper 3, 20%)
A scheduled final exam (30% of grade)
Attendance and participation in the sections (15% of grade)
Attendance and attention at the lectures (priceless)
Bring the books to lectures and sections
Attendance and participation:
the study of literature and the humanities goes on through close, attentive
discussion of texts, objects, and ideas
much of our course material is about how people speak, argue, tell a story,
and listen to and understand the words of others
the shared, proximate experience of listening and discussing is central to
the study of our works
This is more than a course giving you information
This is a course that asks you to engage with information, relate information to
experience, and find ways of expressing your responses to that experience.
ALL WRITTEN WORK MUST BE YOUR OWN